Flash Fiction: short stories under a thousand words.  I woke up grumpy and pounded this out before I had to do some real work.  I don’t have a title.  You can give it one in the comment section, if you’d like.  Its not really spiritual, but then again it kind of is, I don’t know.  So, here’s the story.  I hope you laugh at it…

The Daily Sun showed up just before the daily sun.  It always happened this way.  A roll of newspaper slaps the door and then daybreak.  I laid my slippers at the front door to step outside onto the doormat to retrieve the paper in my bare feet.  It is a bristly bathmat in the mornings, soaked in the night’s showers.  I have hot feet.  This is so soothing.  Fortunately I have not yet invested in one of those mattresses whose foam adjusts according to heat; there’d be two sweaty craters at the end of my bed.  On the days I wear black socks into the office, I can sometimes smell my feet wafting up from under my desk.

I bet the neighbor’s feet smell too.  He’s a fat guy with a desk job who doesn’t even push his own lawn mower.  So lazy.  “Probably doesn’t even own a lawnmower,”  I say to myself, one-upping him.  Until his wife pulls out of the driveway in an opulent new Toyota, the boxy SUV that belongs on a florescent yellow African safari.  It’s very yellow.  I still maintain that I have a better lawn mower, and I bet his feet are probably sweatier than mine.  I wave at his wife as she leaves for her AM workout.  She shakes a bottle of water at me in return.  The water bottle is a mutated human appendage.  We smile at each other through the smoky car-window glass and across a comfortable span of distance too great for telepathy.

I have a garage for my toaster in case it rains in the kitchen.  My wife likes the toaster to be out of sight.  She finds toasters particularly offensive.  Every morning I waltz the toaster around the kitchen, squeezing her body into mine while I confidently extend her cord in my right hand.  My hands aren’t hot like my feet.

The paper is all adverts and opinions.  I saw a commercial last night that you can buy a LandRover for $800 a month.  I better leave a little early for work.  I’m sure there are thousands of people clogging up the interstate near the LandRover exit.  Peculiarly the Sports Page is filled with ads for Japanese massage.  I attribute this to the increase in Asian players in Major League Baseball.  Sushi would be a nice breakfast today.  Bet my mowerless neighbor with the expedition vehicle – that plebe -  is having oatmeal.  “Dragon roll for me, please.  With toast.”

Jets surround my bath tub.  Somehow they got broken, but we didn’t use them anyways.  The wife tells me to get them fixed once a week.  I offer to build a garage for the tub instead.  I am offended by bathtubs.  My feet are sufficiently scrubbed.  This takes some time.  I hate it when you bend over in the shower and the water fills up your nostrils.  I’m going to buy a set of nose plugs the next time I drive past the scuba diving store.

Women invented the half-Windsor knot.  While cinching up my $70 noose, I wish I could meet this Windsor and his missus for a little set-to, a tete-a-tete or a cage fight.  Once I tried to count the layers of fabric I tightened around my neck to intentionally stop the flow of blood to my brain.  I gave up.  “More than most,” was my conclusion.  The shoes are loafers, real masculine.  Nothing deserves to have my sweaty feet in them more than these embarrassing foot-skirts.  They have tassels and a fringe, and were made by someone named Cole, first name Ken.  The neighbor has a similar pair.  Dummy.  Not a suit today, its sport-coat day.  They call pants and coats made of different fabric “separates.”  Jones made my coat.  Jones is a pimp in New York.  $350.  Ellis made the slacks.  Ellis is an island in New York, so the whole ensemble kind of works.  $98 for the pants.

I look credible as I walk through the door of my office in Acquisitions.  The neighbor works down the street 2 blocks  a few floors higher than me in Marketing.  We each drive the same 22 miles separately, taking turns following one another into the city.  When he gets to work he approves the final color swatches for fast food restaurants and retail stores.  Me, I’m a well-dressed pirate.  The board of my company believes we need more things and the shareholders agree.  I rob from the rich and give to the also rich.  Who is better, me or him?  Color guru or Robinhood.  Got to go with Robinhood, right?

Text message in the middle of the day said my kid needs an Earth Day t-shirt for school.  I’ll buy one made in Malaysia by someone his own age.  $3.  You can ship a t-shirt from Malaysia for three bucks?  Costs me $4.95 to mail paperwork to the other side of town.  Who cares.

Commuting home, I am reminded that NPR is an ad for the government.  Talk radio is an ad for the militia.  Country music is written by high-school kids with pimples.  Pop music is an ad for itself, and it just sucks.  The rock station makes me angry.  Nothing feeds my obvious superiority so I settle for making fun of Country music.  Clips of a comedian with a mustache break up the songs and commercials.  Real funny.

The kid is at soccer when I get home.  The wife is driving around.  The picture of us, all of us shining, is hung above my fake fireplace.  The neighbor has the same picture above his fake fireplace, though his photo is of his own family.  Mine is better.  Mine is better.  Mine is… the leather of my sofa is warming around my fancy slacks, around my hot feet.  My eyelids close… better.  I dream about the movie, The Ten Commandments.  I’m pretty sure if it was updated it would be a lot better.  My feet smell terrible.